“A book is a gift you can open again and again.” –Garrison Keillor–

The global warming movement as we have known it is dead. Its health had been in steady decline during the last year as the once robust hopes for a strong and legally binding treaty to be agreed upon at the Copenhagen Summit faded away. By the time that summit opened, campaigners were reduced to hoping for a ‘politically binding’ agreement to be agreed that would set the stage for the rapid adoption of the legally binding treaty. After the failure of the summit to agree to even that much, the movement went into a rapid decline.

Global warming and climate change will be dealt with more emphatically under the Ninth and Tenth Malaysia Plans, which will feature a chapter on measures to mitigate their effects, the deputy prime minister said. Datuk Seri Najib Razak said initiatives would include stringent regulations on residential projects built in low-lying areas and projects to reduce flooding.

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The floods in December 2006 and January 2007 had caused RM1 billion in damages. It was reported that sand dredging barges had already been stationed in major rivers such as Sungai Johor and Sungai Pahang to deepen beds and widen the banks all year round.

Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid had also announced that the government was considering reviewing or even cancelling projects that could worsen floods.

Climate is not the same as weather. It is long term, whereas weather is short term, like today, or this week.
Climate is a large, complex system which, like any system, can be affected by different things. By pushing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and so trapping heat which would otherwise escape into space, by doing this, we are pushing more energy into the system, and our climate produces weather patterns according to how much energy is in the system. This disturbs weather patterns, meaning we get hotter, drier, wetter, windier weather in different places at different times to usual.

Land-use change, such as deforestation, is a big contributor because trees are essentially ‘wet sticks of carbon’, and so burning them both releases CO2 and prevents the trees from absorbing CO2 through photosynthesis, their method of turning sunlight, nutrients and water into energy to grow.
Burning fossil fuels for energy – coal, oil and gas – is a major contributor, as is industrial agriculture, from use of carbon-based pesticides and fertilisers, and fuel for tractors etc. These inputs are avoided in organic agriculture.
So, many human processes increase the amount of greenhouse gases discharged into the atmosphere, and many others remove the earth’s natural ability to absorb them.

Worldwide temperature measurements, corrected for instrumental and measurement errors that result from such factors as changing instruments or urbanization, indicate that global mean annual surface temperatures have increased about 0.3 to 0.6°C during the last 150 years (Nicholls et al., 1996). Since 1975, the increase of the 5-year mean temperature is about 0.5°C – a rate that is faster than for any previous period of equal length in the instrumental record (NASA, 1999). Global surface temperatures in 1998 were the warmest since reliable instrumental measurements began, and seven of the ten warmest years occurred in the 1990s. Temperature reconstructions using proxy climate records such as tree rings, fossil pollen, corals and ice cores and borehole measurements indicate that the 20th century warming is unusual relative to the last 400 to 600 years (e.g., Mann et al., 1998, Overpeck et al., 1997; Pollack et al., 1998).

The observed magnitude and patterns of temperature change during the last century correspond well with model predictions when greenhouse gas, solar, and aerosol forcings are considered together (Wigley, 1999). Most of the recent warming has been in winter over the high mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere continents, between 40 and 70° N (Nicholls et al., 1996). There has also been a general trend toward reduced diurnal temperature range, mostly because nights have warmed more than days. Since 1950, minimum temperatures on land have increased about twice as fast as maximum temperatures (Easterling et al., 1997). This may be attributable in part to increasing cloudiness, which reduces daytime warming by reflection of sunlight and retards the nighttime loss of heat (Karl et al., 1997). Increased soil moisture also reduces daytime warming because part of the solar energy is used to evaporate the excess moisture.

Natural causes are causes that are created by nature. One natural cause is a release of methane gas from arctic tundra and wetlands. Methane is a greenhouse gas and a very dangerous gas to our environment. A greenhouse gas is a gas that traps heat in the earth’s atmosphere. Another natural cause is that the earth goes through a cycle of climate change. This climate change usually lasts about 40,000 years.

Man-made Causes of Global Warming

Man-made causes probably do the most damage to our planet. There are many man-made causes of global warming. Pollution is one of the biggest man-made problems. Pollution comes in many shapes and sizes. Burning fossil fuels is one thing that causes pollution. Fossil fuels are fuels made of organic matter such as coal, or oil. When fossil fuels are burned they give off a green house gas called CO2. Also, mining coal and oil allows methane to escape. How does it escape? Methane is naturally in the ground. When coal or oil is mined you have to dig up the earth a little bit. When you dig up the fossil fuels you dig up the methane as well letting it escape into the atmosphere.

Global warming is when the earth heats up (the temperature rises). It happens when greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrous oxide, and methane) trap heat and light from the sun in the earth’s atmosphere, which increases the temperature. This hurts many people, animals, and plants. Many cannot take the change, so they die.